To You, Who Will Die Alone in Paradise Chapter 66

“Ugh…!”

It was a pain he had experienced once before. It was also proof that he had gone back in time again. Kellewen gritted his teeth to endure the pain that felt like he would lose consciousness.

“Sh-shall I call a doctor?”

“No… I’m all right.”

Kellewen collected himself, wiping away his nosebleed. The man dressed in a servant’s clothes looked at Kellewen, his face pale. Seeing the bouquet in his hand, his memory returned. Before arriving at Celeste Domaine, he had asked a servant for a bouquet because he wanted to give it to Dandeleon.

“What time is it now?”

“Pardon? Uh, about… 5 o’clock?”

Kellewen cursed and ran outside. He had returned to the past, but there wasn’t much time left. He was certain that even if he returned to Celeste Domaine now, Dandeleon would not be there.

“A carriage! Right now!”

Kellewen hurriedly left the royal palace and headed for the inn where he had found the body. Last time, the search had taken time, but this time he thought it would be fine since he already knew where to go. However, things did not go as Kellewen wished.

“Leon? What’s wrong, Leon!”

What he found at the inn was Dandeleon collapsed on the bed and Zellos, who was holding onto him and shaking him. Zellos was startled to see Kellewen burst through the door, and then he escaped through the window.

“Leon!”

Kellewen ran to the bed and lifted Dandeleon up. But the weight in his hands felt strangely heavy.

“Leon…?”

Dandeleon’s head dropped limply.

“Leon? Leon!”

He had already stopped breathing. It seemed he had suffocated after coughing up blood while being pressed against the pillow. The area around his nose and mouth was a mess of dark blood. Kellewen tried everything to save him, but his stopped breath never returned.

When Herma and the crown prince’s soldiers arrived, Kellewen was holding Dandeleon’s body, a look of devastation on his face.

“Let’s go back to the Elven Forest.”

Kellewen said to Herma.

In this meeting, Yggdrasil did not speak first. Kellewen begged the silent Yggdrasil to give him another chance. He pleaded for more time to be turned back, then got angry when no answer came, and after being angry for a long while, he cried and begged.

How much time passed like that? Kellewen opened his eyes again.

“Celeste Domaine should be enough.”

Before him was the crown prince of Benoit. He was nearly finished with his conversation with Kellewen. It was several hours earlier than the last past he had returned to. Convinced that he could make it in time this time, Kellewen left the crown prince’s room.

However, the pain that always came for him assaulted him once again. Unlike last time, this pain was unbearably intense. Kellewen collapsed, vomiting blood, in front of Herma and Tuella Deum, who had come to see him.

It was a full day later when he woke up again. Herma informed the awakened Kellewen of Dandeleon’s death. Kellewen accepted the fact calmly and returned to the Elven Forest.

Because Kellewen had returned on his own, the elders did not rush the preparations for the ritual. Kellewen, who had gained a few days, went around to the school, the library, and research institutes, looking for any and all materials on magic. However, he could not find any records of magic that could turn back time anywhere.

If it wasn’t in the Elven Forest, it would be the same no matter where he searched on the continent. It would be better not to expect any written records. Just as Kellewen was resigning himself to that fact.

“Did you hear? About that.”

“You mean about Mr. Herma?”

“Yeah, that monster…”

He overheard a very strange conversation.

It was the night before the ritual. Kellewen was holed up in the library again that day, rummaging through books. Though it was late at night, there were a few other elves besides Kellewen in the library. One of them was separated from Kellewen by two bookshelves, so he was not visible, but someone approached him and started a conversation.

Not wanting to eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation, Kellewen hesitated. Should he clear his throat to announce his presence, or should he just leave the library and go home? Just as Kellewen’s mind was leaning toward the latter, an excited voice was heard.

“They say it looks just like a human, but its eyes are purple…!”

• To be continued in the next chapter –

Chapter 42

The moment he heard those words, all of Kellewen’s thoughts stopped at once. The strength left his hands and the book he was holding nearly fell, but he desperately held onto it. He had to hear more of the conversation. Right now, that was more important than figuring out the source of the anxiety rising within him.

“It seems Mr. Herma has been running all sorts of experiments. The result is… haha…”

“Experiments? That’s a nice way of putting it. Isn’t it just torture?”

“You won’t be able to say that when you see the results. It’s an incredible discovery, I tell you. Maybe…”

The voice of the elf telling the story grew quiet. Kellewen barely restrained himself from running over and pressing him for more.

“…Ha, no way.”

“Whether you believe it or not is up to you, but…”

The two whispered a few more words like that and then went outside. He listened until the very end, but he heard almost no useful information. Kellewen sank weakly to the floor. The book he had been clutching in his hand to the end fell to the floor with a thud.

“Don’t tell me…”

Every elf knew that Herma researched monsters. But it was the first time he had heard that he experimented on living monsters. The words ‘that’s a nice way of putting it, it’s just torture’ kept circling in Kellewen’s mind. As did the words ‘a monster with purple eyes that looks just like a human.’

“No, that can’t be…”

Kellewen shook his head, denying the unpleasant premonition that arose within him.

Most monsters had purple eyes. Monsters that resembled continentals were not common, but if you limited the location to just the Elven Forest, they weren’t that rare either. In Kellewen’s short life, there had been several instances of monsters targeting Yggdrasil who stole the appearance of their kin to invade the forest.

So, such a thing couldn’t be. Such an absurd, terrible thing….

After sitting on the floor and thinking for a long time, Kellewen finally made his decision and got up. Kellewen quietly slipped out of the library and headed for Herma’s house.

Herma was busy with ritual preparations and was not home. Knowing this well, Kellewen broke into the house without hesitation. While searching the house thoroughly, he discovered a hidden door under a rug. Opening the door revealed a staircase leading to a basement.

Kellewen went down to the basement. With each step he took, the smell from below grew stronger. It was an utterly nauseating smell, a mix of an unidentifiable stench and the smell of chemicals. Kellewen covered his nose and mouth and stepped onto the last stair.

The basement was spacious. He flinched at the sight of a large shadow, but upon closer look, it was a taxidermied monster. After briefly examining the taxidermy, which was posed in a stoop, perhaps due to its great height, Kellewen turned his gaze away again.

Inside glass jars on a cupboard were body parts and what looked like the internal organs of monsters preserved in liquid, and on the other wall hung a multitude of tools—more than ten knives, saws, and hammers of different sizes, and tools he couldn’t even guess the use of.

And below them, on a table, something whitish could be seen.

“……!”

Goosebumps erupted all over Kellewen’s body. He slowly approached the table. With every step came a prayer. Great Yggdrasil, please, just let it not be what I think it is, please….

His steps came to a halt.

Though much of it was lost and its appearance was unspeakably horrific, Kellewen could recognize him well enough from just a part of the corpse’s face.

It was Dandeleon.

“Ah… Aah…”

A groan escaped Kellewen’s lips. He couldn’t possibly accept the scene spread out before his eyes. His thoughts stopped, and his body also creaked. The desire to get closer to the corpse and the desire to get away from it conflicted, and his body lost its balance. To keep from falling, Kellewen reached out his hand blindly and grabbed onto something. Something cool and round was caught by his fingers.

Kellewen dazedly checked what his hand had touched. Inside a glass jar, a transparent liquid sloshed, and a round object looked at him.

It was a beautiful, purple eyeball that seemed to glow on its own in the darkness.

The moment he met that eye, Kellewen’s magic exploded.

The magic became a great blaze and instantly engulfed the basement. The flames, which ignited in a small space, exploded and turned into even bigger flames. The conflagration swallowed Herma’s house and quickly spread in all directions.

“Fire! In the west sector!”

“Is it an attack?”

“No, it’s magic! There’s a flow of magic!”

“Captain, isn’t that your house?”

The elves were flustered by the sudden fire that broke out the day before the ritual. It was not a natural fire, nor was it a monster attack, but a blaze born of magic, which made it all the more so. While the elves who had hastily set out to extinguish the fire were left behind, Herma and Tuella Deum headed toward where the fire had started.

“Kellewen…?”

And there, they saw a tsunami of fire.

“Kellen!”

Kellewen was in the middle of the surging flames. The surroundings were on fire, and though it was the middle of the night, it was as bright as day. Kellewen walked forward, treading on the ground where only ashes remained after the inferno had already swept through once. Every time he took a step, flames bloomed from where he had trod.

The moment he saw that, Herma realized what Kellewen had seen in his house.

“Listen to me, Kellen! That’s a monster! It’s not human!”

Herma shouted, enduring a heat so intense it was difficult to even open his eyes.

“I can prove it! It’s true!”

Kellewen said nothing. He approached Herma, his entire body wreathed in flames. The hem of Kellewen’s clothes and his hair billowed in the fire. He looked at Herma.

For the first time in his life, Herma felt fear.

“Captain!”

That fleeting moment of fear made Herma slow. Kellewen reached out and seized Herma’s shoulder. Where Kellewen’s hand touched, flames erupted and covered Herma’s body.

“Uwaaaaaaah!”